Google News completely overhauled, as company looks to prioritise trust

Changes come amid criticism of online news and concerns about the role of trust

Actress Yara Shahidi speaks onstage during The Paley Center For Media & Google present "Cracking the Code: Diversity, Hollywood & STEM" at Google Headquarters on October 3, 2015 in Venice, California (Mike Windle/Getty Images for Google)

Google has announced sweeping changes to its news offering, as it looks to prioritise trust.

The company has long offered a specialist news service that aggregates stories from around the rest of the web. But the internet has become a much more difficult place for the news, after a run of stories that have undermined trust in platforms and publishers.

Now the site claims that its newly redesigned Google News offering will make it far easier to keep up with the news, and avoid false or misleading reports.

It does that using a combination of artificial intelligence and other tools. It takes the huge amount of information being published to the web and organises it into stories that readers might be interested in, using machine learning to understand what stories are about and the vast amount of information it stores about people to guess what they might be interested in.

The reimagined Google News uses a new set of AI techniques to take a constant flow of information as it hits the web, analyze it in real time and organize it into storylines," wrote Google News boss Trystan Upstill in a blog post. "This approach means Google News understands the people, places and things involved in a story as it evolves, and connects how they relate to one another.

"At its core, this technology lets us synthesize information and put it together in a way that helps you make sense of what’s happening, and what the impact or reaction has been."

As well as using AI to understand stories, the new Google News will try to ensure that people get the information they want to read about, too. Just like with services such as YouTube, the site will have a special "For You" section that shows people what it thinks they want to read.

"We start with a briefing of five stories that Google News has organized for you—a mix of the most important headlines, local news and the latest developments on the topics you’re interested in," wrote Mr Upstill. "And the more you use the app, the better the app gets. We’ve also built easy-to-use and easy-to-access controls so you can decide if you want to see more or less of a topic or publisher."

As well as the features for reading, Google claims the new app and service will allow people to find and support the websites and news publishers they want to read. As well as being able to follow specific publications, it will also be easy to subscribe to specific publishers.

The new version of Google News replaces Google Play Newstand on mobile and desktop and the Google News & Weather mobile app, too. It will start rolling out straight away and will soon roll out to everyone around the world, on iOS and Android, very soon.